  He dreamed away his hours in school; He sat with such an absent air, The master reckoned him a fool, And gave him up in dull despair. When other lads were making hay You'd find him loafing by the stream; He'd take a book and slip away, And just pretend to fish . . . and dream. His brothers passed him in the race; They climbed the hill and clutched the prize. He did not seem to heed, his face Was tranquil as the evening skies. He lived apart, he spoke with few; Abstractedly through life he went; Oh, what he dreamed of no one knew, And yet he seemed to be content. I see him now, so old and gray, His eyes with inward vision dim; And though he faltered on the way, Somehow I almost envied him. At last beside his bed I stood: "And is Life done so soon?" he sighed; "It's been so rich, so full, so good, I've loved it all . . ."—and so he died. Another day. Framed in hedgerows of emerald, the wheat glows with a caloric fervor, as if gorged with summer heat. In the vivid green of pastures old women are herding cows. Calm and patient are their faces as with gentle industry they bend over their knitting. One feels that they are necessary to the landscape. To gaze at me the field-workers suspend the magnificent lethargy of their labors. The men with the reaping hooks improve the occasion by another pull at the cider bottle under the stook; the women raise apathetic brown faces from the sheaf they are tying; every one is a study in deliberation, though the crop is russet ripe and crying to be cut. Then on I go again amid high banks overgrown with fern and honeysuckle. Sometimes I come on an old mill that seems to have been constructed by Constable, so charmingly does Nature imitate Art. By the deserted house, half drowned in greenery, the velvety wheel, dipping in the crystal water, seems to protest against this prolongation of its toil. Then again I come on its brother, the Mill of the Wind, whirling its arms so cheerily, as it turns its great white stones for its master, the floury miller by the door. These things delight me. I am in a land where Time has lagged, where simple people timorously hug the Past. How far away now seems the welter and swelter of the city, the hectic sophistication of the streets. The sense of wonder is strong in me again, the joy of looking at familiar things as if one were seeing them for the first time. |
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